News, notes, and anecdotes on the Fort Wayne TinCaps

Countdown to Arizona

By this time tomorrow, I’ll be enjoying 84 degrees, sun and baseball in Peoria, Arizona. Be jealous.

Yesterday I helped Mitch McClary and crew with pouring cement in the batting cages here at the ballpark. We pretty much brought as many wheelbarrows full of wet cement from the mixing truck to the batting cage as quickly as possible. How full were they? Well, Chris Watson‘s wheelbarrow handle snapped in half when he was getting ready to bring his first load in. Less than an hour later, Tim Burkhart had made a new handle and attached it. It was like doing yard work with Al Borland before he became the host of Family Feud.

Anyway, I’m no expert, but I think the cement ended up looking pretty good.

I’m usually up here in the radio booth for work, but going down to the delivery dock for the Wheelbarrow-palooza was a real eye-opener. In a five-minute span, we had a cement truck, a paint delivery, a tractor trailer dropping something off and a special event crowd coming in. I can best describe it as semi-controlled chaos. As far as I know, nobody attending the special event got their paint or wet cement on their nice clothes, so everybody wins.

Also within the last couple of days, I got an e-mail from someone who said they read on here that I like curling (my first thought was that they were lying, because nobody reads this, but I kept going with the e-mail). Apparently there’s a movement underway to create the Fort Wayne Curling Club and I’m invited to join. So, as you can imagine, OF COURSE I signed up to at least learn more about it. I could see myself getting way into curling. Don’t you hope Fort Wayne becomes a curling hotbed? I do.

Ask yourself this: Were is the Baseball Hall of Fame induction held? Cooperstown. Where is the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony? Canton. Where did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony/party take place the other night? New York City. Whew. We don’t want ABBA or The Stooges having to stoop to the level of having to come to Cleveland, would we? Is New York really hurting for entertainment dollars? And what kind of world do we live in when ABBA is considered rock and roll music? Am I the only one at least pretending to be outraged by this?

Finally, I hope you noticed that Genesis (and, by extension, Phil Collins) went into the rock hall. Certain people in this office would be upset about that.

Wednesday ramblings:

I saw yesterday that Kevin Towers was hired by the Yankees as a special assignment scout. I won’t say how, but I could’ve guessed this in early December. You can see a lot of things at the Winter Meetings just by observing.

Fort Wayne native Kyle Day, now in the Reds’ organization, worked out at Parkview Field over the off-season. I could make a joke about how the TinCaps dominated Day’s Dayton Dragons last year, but doing so would probably mean the TinCaps go 0-18 against them this year.

Matt Stairs stole a base in a game yesterday. There were no survivors.

Mat Latos had a good outing the other day in his bid for the No. 5 spot in the Padres’ starting rotation.

With all this St. Patrick’s Day hubbub, does anyone know what St. Patrick was actually the patron saint of? And if your name was Patrick and people insisted on calling you Patty, wouldn’t you get sick of it? These are things I think about.

I think that’s all from here… I’ll try to post on Friday after our first work day in Arizona. We’ll be sending back audio, video, photos, and whatever else we can come up with, which you can find on TinCaps.com. Also, I found some crazy numbers about how unlikely the TinCaps’ 2009 season was. They might even be legitimate. Tune in Friday!

The following are trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball entities and may be used only with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. or the relevant Major League Baseball entity: Major League, Major League Baseball, MLB, the silhouetted batter logo, World Series, National League, American League, Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the names, nicknames, logos, uniform designs, color combinations, and slogans designating the Major League Baseball clubs and entities, and their respective mascots, events and exhibitions.